The Many Faces of Druid (Standard – Kraken)

Introduction

This is the second installation of my “The Many Faces of …”. I started a few weeks back with Warrior and will continue today with druid.

Before the release of Whispers of the Old Gods and the nerfs to classic and basic Cards, that were introduced one week prior, Druid was considered a very narrow but also very powerful class. Force of Nature and Savage Roar, in their Prior iteration, were just too good to be ignored in a competitive environment. Midrange/Combo Druid was the most dominant archetype by far while other Play styles e.g. Ramp Druid and Aggro Druid saw only occasional play. Only in some states of the meta the were played more frequently as they were used as Counters to other decks.

Today, the grand picture has changed quite a bit. Force of Nature no longer grants charge, old cards dropped out and new cards were introduced. These changes lead to a downfall in Druid’s popularity. Only directly after the release of the Old Gods set, C’Thun Druid was very popular, but as people realized how to counter this deck, its play has rapidly decreased.

The State of Druid in the Actual Meta

So, where does Druid stand right now? There were a number of good and interesting druid cards introduced. The most hyped cards were Fandral Staghelm, Mire Keeper and Mark of Y’Shaarj. Feral Rage was neglected for a while but is gaining popularity and Dark Arakkoa is fine, in- and even outside of C’Thun Druid. Despite this, matter of factly, Druid is one of the least popular classes right now (Start of Season 27). But there is a huge BUT…

On the 30th of May, an article drove me to write this as treenewbee’s MalyYogg Druid claimed #1 Legend in China. Also Fade2Karma’s J4ACKIECHAN held #2 Legend in EU for a short time and playing his Token Druid and is still successful in high legend play (finished #100, despite the deck containing Whisps of the Old Gods! 😉 ). Me, for my part, I had quite a bit of success with a net-decked Ramp Druid (Stonekeep’s version), admittedly in lower ranks though (ranks 15 through 7). Anyway, I found the new Ramp Druid really rewarding to play as it involves lots of decision making. Atop, Beast Druid is considered very powerful and showed successful play on the ladder, sadly I tend to have not the right mindset to play this archetype being more a of control player. Other Aggro Druid variantions are experimented with but still there is no deck comparable to the raw power that we saw in Aggro Druid before WotOG.

As you can see, the Force of Nature nerf was indeed healthy to the class. It opened up the viability of different decks. Despite being at the bottom of popularity right now, I think Druid will rise again when things are figured out better. In any case, it is simply a more enjoyable experience to play and to play against Malfurion tahn it was before Standard.

Deck Lists

Enough words, below you can find the decks I could find that are ladder viable or simply fun in Standard, devided into different categories. If I missed to give credit to the right deck creator or I skipped a good druid deck entirely, please do not hesitate to contact me via Twitter @OtakuMZ1978.

Have fun and may nature rise against your Opponent!

Aggressive Druids